Cthulhu Saves the World: 6 days on Steam outsells 18 months on 360’s Indie Games channel

Indie dev thanks Valve's platform, gives free art and tunes

Indie developer Zeboyd, who recently released its RPGs Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death on PC, says Steam has proven to be a vastly more effective platform than Xbox Live Indie Games. The titles, which have been available on Microsoft's service for some time, launched July 13 on Valve's platform, immediately surpassing the devs' expectations by rocketing up sales charts. Less than a week after launch, Zeboyd said Steam has already been more lucrative than 18 months on XBLIG – and it's giving away art and soundtracks to celebrate.

Zeboyd suggested in March that Microsoft's platform was far too easy to exploit, with one developer encouraging players to up-vote its titles even if they didn't own an Xbox 360 – and players taking it upon themselves to downvote rivals' games, such as those by Zeboyd. In contrast, the Steam success of the two titles “has been downright staggering,” says Zeboyd's Robert Boyd. “Zeboyd Games has already made more revenue in less than a week on Steam than we have in over a year and a half on the XBox Live Indie Games service,” effused Boyd this week.

Above: Breath of Death digs Breath of Fire and doesn't care who knows it